So I’m staying in a dorm situation as a temporary thing … and w00t – there seems to be a disproportionate number of Betas there for some reason. When I first arrived, this EIE lady, who seemed to be the self-appointed leader, started laying down the rules literally before I’d been in the room for ten seconds. She seemed taken aback by my easygoingness – like she was expecting resistance - and tried to get a reaction out of me by telling these horror stories about what went on in the place. I got the impression that she was exaggerating for effect, so they didn’t bother me much. Every so often she’d stop, and say she didn’t want to scare me … but that she thought I deserved to have the heads up. From my perspective, it seems like EIEs concentrate their energies on trying to get you sufficiently riled up, and when you're in the state they want you in, they skilfully direct your passion away from them and into channels they've already dug. Heh. :-p So anyway, she eventually wearied of trying to work me up, and remarked that I didn’t seem to be the type of person who stressed over things much. She said it with a smile, but seemed slightly annoyed. :-P
I’ve since come to the conclusion that she’s a bit nuts.. :0 I woke up the other day to her ranting about how some other girl in the room was a bitch etc … and naturally I assumed there was someone else in the room she was talking to, until it became apparent that she was talking to herself. :-/ It was all I could do not to lie there listening and laughing - because it was a rather eloquent speech with big words and metaphors and everything.
But I sat up, and she seemed completely unembarrassed to find I was there … and said something about it being healthy to get things off her chest. Then she started going on about why she hated this other girl – stuff that seemed like conspiracy theory rubbish to me (she reckoned this girl was slowly cutting her way into her suitcase – ripping the stitching a little bit every day lol). Anyway, fortunately there’s this sane, IEI girl I get on well with … and we are like the room’s mediators lol – which mostly involves listening to the EIE and trying to calm her down. The IEI’s approach works better, because she listens with a serious face and tells her in a nice way not to be so paranoid … whereas I’m more “eh – I really don’t think anyone’s out to get you … just relax” which seems to have the opposite effect that I intend; she just redoubles her efforts to convince me that something’s wrong. So now I’ve taken to nodding and trying to sympathise. Meh.
The funny thing is that I’m not really bothered by the drama. The EIE would likely kill me if she found out that I find her scenes rather diverting. :0 There’s something about being around Betas that makes me even more carefree than I normally am. It feels to me that they exaggerate drama to the point where they suck all the seriousness that I would naturally feel about issues and take it for themselves. Things that I should be taking seriously take on this comically dramatic air and it just all feels like a big fictitious drama. I feel that the Betas care enough about the issues for me as well as them, so I don’t have to worry at all. Like they make me feel artificially safe about things. So I was thinking that it would make sense for Alphas to have the opposite effect on Betas – that they feel we don't care enough about things - therefore they find themselves getting more dramatic about things than they normally would. So maybe that's why we can end up appearing like caricatures to each other. :-/